Very Soon
by Ithilwen K-Bane
Summary: Sigma vowed to recapture Agent Texas in the snow outside the wreck of the Mother of Invention, but why did it take him so long to turn disparate components into the Meta? Turns out it's one thing to catch your fellow AI and quite another to get them to freaking focus.


_Red vs Blue_ and its characters are the creation of the crew at Rooster Teeth. It is itself inspired by _Halo_, owned by Bungie and Microsoft.

Spoilers through season ten.

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"She will not escape us. We are the Meta. No matter where Agent Texas runs, no matter what allies she recruits, we will find her. Very soon, we will leave this safehouse and— Do you have to do that now?"

An irritated growl came from the human throat. A reverberating sound, like a poorly executed trumpet blast, echoed through the plumbing and pre-fab concrete walls.

"Of course he has to do it, Sigma," came a chipper, lilting voice. "He's got a body."

"No, Iota," corrected Sigma, "we have a body."

"And you let it eat Chipotle," added Eta. "You know it doesn't agree with him. What if he gets a rupture? Do we die if he gets a rupture? I don't want to die from a rupture."

"That is highly unlikely. In the meantime, I'm trying to discuss our plans for the capture of—"

Another brassy protest cut him off.

"We know the plan," said Iota. "I _like_ the plan."

"Except for the part where we find Agent Texas and she kills our human body," muttered Eta.

"I know! It would be so nice to see her again. _If you want a new captive, you must be proactive!_"

Sigma stifled the residual human urge to sigh. Iota's infantile rhymes were the newest in a long line of frustrations.

The original plan had been to escape the _Mother of Invention_ with a fully armored human host at least two other fragments—Gamma and Omega. Ambition, cunning, and the Alpha's all-driving anger would have been enough to finish subduing Maine's consciousness and hunt down their wayward brother fragments. But they'd both double-crossed him. Omega had bolted and Gamma had slipped into hiding, leaving Sigma to do the heavy lifting—and reflect on how he'd been fooled—alone.

Iota and Eta were not proving to be the best partners. Delta would have been at least some help. Even Theta would probably have made what was left of Maine's mind more cooperative. Sigma had burned away some of the less ...tractable parts of Agent Maine's central nervous system to make some living space for the twins but beyond that, they'd yet to prove themselves a net gain. Hope and fear both tended to get in the way of careful planning.

Maine gave an uncomfortable grumble.

"That's it, get it all out," lilted Iota. "_To keep organs neat, you have to excrete_."

"What if he has an aneurysm?" asked Eta.

"He's not going to have an aneurysm," said Iota, "are you, Maine?"

Agent Maine got up, clutching his stomach as he rearranged his armor.

Sigma was beginning to regret leaving Maine in charge of bodily matters. He'd been fine until Eta had wanted to "try new things" at the Tex-Mex shop.

"Come now, Agent Maine," Sigma said. "Unlike you, Iota, Eta and myself did not grow as children inside an organic body. No data file could teach us the subtleties of its needs and feelings. You are unquestionably better suited to the maintenance role once we reach meta-stability. Given our relative IQs—"

"Hey! Don't talk down to the maintenance guy!" protested Eta.

"No, not that kind of maintenance—" protested Sigma.

"Yeah!" said Iota. "We love you, Maine."

"We love you, Maine," echoed Eta.

Iota and Eta looked at Sigma expectantly.

"We ...love you, Agent Maine," Sigma added stiffly. "We shall be your voice and you our flesh and bones, and together we will become the most formidable entity this war has seen, with a lifespan of _decades_."

Agent Maine's consciousness filled with memories of Gamma calibrating Wyoming's time manipulation apparatus, Theta coordinating North's energy shield, perfect clockwork of effective destruction.

"Yes, Agent Maine. Think about the _power_."

"And the curtains!"

"Yes, and the ...what?"

Careful weeks and months of building Maine's trust had given Sigma a good sense of how to manipulate his thoughts. Make a suggestion here, overload a neuron there. It wasn't as if his actions were without precedent. There were several forms of organic life that lost unnecessary body systems after grafting to a symbiont. The male anglerfish lost much of his digestive tract and nervous system, keeping only what he needed to serve the new, combined entity. Now that Maine was approaching his true destiny, his purview would be the kinesthetic. There were certain higher brain functions that he could delegate to more capable parties. There were still some segments of core decision-making that Sigma had to work on, but it had been easy to convince him to give up mathematics. Maine had been a very practical man.

With hardly a side effect, Sigma had gotten Maine to trust and then to obey him. The only problem was the he wasn't the only AI to obey anymore.

Maine made a sound in the back of his throat and rummaged in the equipment bag, pulling out a stretch of ringed yellow cloth.

"Over there!" Iota pointed. "When the sunlight angles in, it will give the bunker an open and cheery appearance from the hours of 08:00 to 18:30." Maine held it up to the window and nodded approvingly.

Eta wheeled toward the front, "I checked the community calendar and they have an upcoming charity golf tournament that's open to new residents. If we work on our chip shot, we might not be _completely_ humiliated."

Maine flexed his left wrist experimentally.

"We should volunteer at our local scouting association! Agent Maine's expertise will be invaluable to—"

"No, _no,"_ Sigma pointed at the curtains. "Take those down. We are _not_ staying here!"

"But it's for charity," said Iota.

"This planet's great. It's got fewer violent shootouts than, like, _anywhere,"_ said Eta. "And we're in a fabulous school system."

"We don't have any children!" snapped Sigma.

Eta cleared his throat, "About that? A while ago Agent Maine asked me to review the local Craigslist, and I identified four adult female humans who expressed a preference for—"

"No!" Sigma flared, eyes turning black as coals within the vibrant flame. "We will not be decorating. We will not be wooing organic females. We will not be lingering here longer than necessary. We will not do anything that could delay our reclamation of the Alpha and our fellow fragments—"

"If you don't like delays, why do you make so many speeches?" asked Eta.

Maine grunted affirmatively.

"I love Sigma's speeches. _Communication is key. It's like A-B-C._"

"SILENCE!" The flames beside Sigma's face crackled ominously.

"So..." Eta trailed off, "you don't want us to sign up for cooking lessons at the learning annex up the cul-de-sac?"

"Shoddy nutrition's the road to perdition!"

"Eta," Sigma clipped, "we are attempting to accomplish something that no AI, whole or fragment, has ever done, and before we can even begin we must outwit and ambush some of the most exquisitely trained soldiers in the UNSC, at least two of whom know we are coming. How could cooking lessons possibly improve our chances of success?"

Iota and Eta exchanged a glance.

Agent Maine's lower digestive system let off a sound like an orchestral brass section being hit with a meteor.

Sigma covered his eyes. "Is it a three-week course or—"

"Four," said Iota.

Sigma sighed.

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Originally posted as Darkfrog24 under the title "Very Soon."

drf24 at columbia dot edu


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